Descendants Of Slaves Research Articles

Sites of Memory and Time Slips: Narratives of the “Good Master” and the History of Brazilian Slavery

Oral histories about slavery and the postemancipation period in Brazil and other regions of the Americas often contain descriptions of masters who were kind and humane to their slaves. This article takes one such testimony as a point of departure to analyze why descendants of slaves depicted former masters in a positive light. It argues that, instead of indicating forms of false consciousness and naiveté, narratives of good masters often reflect two operations taking place in the oral memories of Afro-Brazilians: the creation of sites of memory and the occurrence of time slips. As identified by Pierre Nora, sites of memory are entities that condense a community’s symbolic heritage. Time slips, a concept borrowed from science-fiction literature, are a type of anachronism that applies to specific individuals. While these two concepts probably do not exhaust the whole range of explanations for the good-master narrative, they do contribute to depicting Afro-descendants as historical actors capable of discussing their own experiences in a nuanced and multi-faceted way.

A Missouri author in a Roman law court: Pudd’nhead Wilson as an allegory of colourblind empire

ABSTRACTIn his novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, set in the later antebellum period but written after Reconstruction, Mark Twain dramatizes the contradictions of the American racial hierarchy. In the story a light-skinned young man, born a slave but switched in the cradle with a free child, meets a tragic fate when his identity is revealed. The novel forms an unintentional bridge between the ancient Roman law of slavery, the foundation of much American slave law, and America’s contemporary ‘colourblind’ legal consensus, which coexists with a historically unprecedented, racially distorted system of mass incarceration. In ancient Rome, unlike the antebellum US, slaves carried no indelible visual markers of their status, and many were eventually freed. These conditions led to a great deal of legislation and litigation around status confusion, the legal matter at the heart of Pudd’nhead Wilson. A new form of status confusion exists in the US after emancipation; none are formally designated as slaves under the law, and race-based laws have supposedly been eliminated, and yet the law punishes the descendants of slaves en masse, in proportion to their pigmentation. This paper considers and compares these three circumstances of status confusion, toward the end of reasserting the central importance of race in the contemporary legal environment, and in white Americans’ civic fantasies.

“Waliletwa na Kengele ya Kanisa!”: Discourses of Slave Emancipation and Conversion at Ndala Catholic Mission in Western Tanzania, 1896-1913

Religious discourse has recently attracted attention of anthropologists in Tanzania looking at Christian-Muslim relations and Islamic revivalism within specific social and political contexts. This paper contributes to the existing knowledge of religious discourse in Tanzania by looking at the discourses of slave emancipation and conversion at Ndala within the historical context, that is, from 1896 to 1913. The paper relies on the missionary reports in the diary of Ndala Catholic Mission, secondary sources, and interviews collected at Ndala with descendants of former slaves. The paper employs Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a framework to examine vocabularies, expressions, the social contexts and effects of the discourses of men and women about slavery, emancipation, and conversion at Ndala. The paper also relies on Ruth Wodak’s discourse historical method to analyse the social processes, in historical context, of slave emancipation and conversion reported in the diary of Ndala, written sources, and the interviews of descendants of former slaves.

From plantation to proletariat: Raizals in San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina

The authors examine the implications of both a recent international ruling at The Hague curtailing fishing rights and the encroaching Colombian-based tourist industry for Raizals – descendants of African slaves brought by the British to the islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina in the Caribbean Sea. There they developed an autonomous way of life, in a subsistence economy based on fishing after the British abandoned the islands. While nominally under the control of the Spanish empire and afterwards the Colombian state, Raizals differ in many ways from the dominant Spanish-speaking, Creole and Catholic mainland population – being English-speaking, Afro and Protestant. Until the mid-twentieth century, they enjoyed substantial autonomy, now undermined by the Colombian nation-building project and a judgment of the international court at The Hague giving nearby Nicaragua rights over the waters of the Colombian islands, consequently precluding Raizals from accessing their traditional fishing resources. As a result, the islanders, with their culture recast as ‘heritage’, have become proletarians subordinated to tourist industries owned by mainland Colombians.

Memory, Identity and Heritage in the south Kenya Coast: Case of Shimoni Slave caves

Though slavery was practised in the Kenya coast for a long time, the subject of slavery has,however, been an anathema in Kenya. Nobody has been willing to talk about it or its effects.Slowly, however, things have started to change and now people, especially those thought to be descendants of slaves or slave traders have started to talk about it. This paper, using theShimoni slave caves on the south Kenya coast, examines what is being remembered and how these memories are being used to construct relationships not only within and between the communities of these areas but with the wider Kenyan nation.

50 Years of Occupation

50 Years of Occupation

Human papillomavirus genotypes 68 and 58 are the most prevalent genotypes in women from quilombo communities in the state of Maranhão, Brazil

To determine the frequency of human papillomavirus (HPV) types and behavioral characteristics related to cytological abnormalities in women descendants of slaves, who live in isolated communities known as quilombos in the state of Maranhão, Brazil. Cervicovaginal specimens of 353 women were analyzed by conventional cytology and genotyping. HPV detection and genotyping was performed using a linear array HPV genotyping test kit. Behavioral factors and their association with cytological abnormalities were analyzed, as well as the association between cytological abnormalities and HPV infection. The frequency of HPV infection was 13%, and infection with high-risk HPV types was more frequent than with low-risk types (10.2% vs. 2.8%). The most prevalent genotypes were HPV 68 (3.1%) and HPV 58 (2.6%). HPV-positive women were 6.5 times more likely than HPV-negative women to be diagnosed with cytological abnormalities. There was a significant association between HPV infection and the presence of cytological abnormalities in women 31-40 years of age and in women 51-60 years of age. A distinct profile of high-risk HPV genotypes was detected, with predominance of types 68 and 58. It is possible that the results of the present study are due to specific characteristics of the population, which is geographically isolated and maintains conservative sexual habits.

Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City by Tyina L. Steptoe

Reviewed by: Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow Cityby Tyina L. Steptoe Julia Gunn Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City. By Tyina L. Steptoe. American Crossroads. ( Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Pp. x, 327. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-520-28258-2; cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-520-28257-5.) Over the course of the twentieth century, Houston, Texas, became the fourth-largest city in the United States and one of the nation's most ethnically and racially diverse metropolitan areas. Yet the city too often remains on the periphery of histories of race, migration, and twentieth-century American urban development. Tyina L. Steptoe's Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow Cityoffers a welcome corrective to this historiographical oversight by examining, in fine detail, the centrality of migration to understanding Houston's history. The city became an important site of contact for English-, Spanish-, and French-speaking migrants who brought with them complex and dynamic understandings of race that challenged the black/white binary of the Jim Crow regime. Steptoe reveals how black East Texans, Creoles, Tejanos, and Mexican migrants transformed the city's spatial and cultural landscape between World War I and the 1960s. Building on the work of David R. Roediger and other scholars of whiteness and race formation, Houston Boundoffers a sociocultural exploration of the "volatile nature of racial blackness" (p. 6). Divided into three sections, Houston [End Page 464] Boundbegins by tracing the social construction of blackness in the Bayou City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Steptoe details how black migrants from East Texas, descendants of slaves, "worked to build an alternate geography over … [a] landscape of violent white supremacy" (p. 23). They built neighborhoods, such as Freedman's Town, in the city's Fourth Ward, and Independence Heights, a three-square-mile area that separated from Houston in 1915 to become the state's first '"all Negro city'" (p. 30). Such spaces, history, and increased political activism fostered a sense of shared racial identity among black Houstonians. Creole and ethnic Mexican migrants also found themselves entangled in Jim Crow's narrow racial binary. Louisiana Creoles saw themselves as neither black nor white based on their combined French and African heritage, despite the fact that they were legally classified as black. Ethnic Mexicans, in contrast, were white by law, but their cultural practices, such as speaking Spanish and practicing Catholicism, often became grounds for exclusion from white classrooms and other public spaces. Despite such discrimination, black Houstonians resented the fact that ethnic Mexicans and other European immigrants were considered white under the law. In 1924, for example, the Houston Informercomplained of the "numerous foreigners in this city, who can barely speak our common tongue," yet had more rights as citizens than native-born black Houstonians (p. 99). As Steptoe argues, "A person's perceived proximity to blackness (and, therefore, distance from whiteness) could also determine his or her place in the local hierarchy," particularly in a city with a growing and racially ambiguous migrant population (p. 94). A teenage Längsten Hughes, for example, successfully boarded a whites-only sleeping car traveling across Texas by purchasing his ticket in Spanish. Likewise, ethnic Mexicans passed as Italian, French, and Spanish immigrants. Creole migrants accessed white spaces by dropping their Francophone accents—some temporarily, and others permanently. For those with light complexions and linguistic flexibility, racial identity in Houston was potentially malleable and contextual. Houston Boundends by exploring how various forms of music including Texas tenor jazz, orquesta, zydeco, la-la, rhythm and blues, and soul facilitated contact and collaboration across racial, ethic, and linguistic groups in the city. Among Houston Bound's, most important contributions is centering Houston—and the urban South—in the broader narrative of race and migration in American cities. The story of early-twentieth-century immigration too often skews toward America's coasts, and Steptoe makes a compelling case for scholars to shift their orientation south. Steptoe's focus on sound—through language and song—underscores for historians the promise of mining sources beyond the archives, and it highlights Houston's...

Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction by Maria Rice Bellamy

Reviewed by: Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction by Maria Rice Bellamy Alexandra Kingston-Reese Maria Rice Bellamy. Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2015. xii + 190 pp. Throughout Maria Rice Bellamy's Bridges to Memory, the figure of trauma's ghost resonates. Its presence echoes; its residue clarifies as often as it clouds. It even manifests literally in the fictional narratives at the center of the book's focus. But this is not a book that lets trauma's ghost remain in the shadows. Through the theory of postmemory, what Bellamy offers is a concerted realignment of the way contemporary ethnic women writers engage generationally with traumatic pasts that is both conceptually distinctive and socially forceful. With deft treatment, the ghostly presence of trauma is engaged to recover the violent experiences of ethnic American women often "repressed from mainstream social consciousness" and reimagine the effect of its legacy on future generations as they work toward repair (3). Reading works such as Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Octavia Butler's Kindred, Phyllis Alesia Perry's Stigmata, Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban, Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman, and Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Bellamy casts each as revelatory: braiding narratives of past, present, and future generations to draw attention to and expose "inherited forms of traumatic memory" (2). It is with this emphasis that Bridges to Memory gains ethical force. By drawing together narratives whose focus is to illuminate the "suffering of others" through practices of "mediation" (5), the book identifies the experience of violent trauma not solely as the domain of the individual but as "intersubjective communion" (4). Theorizing this experience in terms of postmemory, Bellamy negotiates trauma as a space "inhabited by narrators and auditors, survivors and descendants, in which temporal and subjective boundaries are blurred, allowing the memories of one to haunt and infect the other." She navigates facets of postmemory not simply to identify a new contemporary genre of the postmemorial journey—"comprised of a three-step process of identification, translation, and differentiation" (6)—but to shed light on how narratives of postmemory are as literarily innovative as they are socially representative, employing an array of techniques "to overcome the traumatic ruptures and temporal distance that separate the child of postmemory from her ancestral inheritance" (7). With such a dextrous model, Bellamy is able to illuminate the effect of postmemorial journeys on the formation of contemporary identities while simultaneously provoking a generative literary conversation elicited by traumas of the female body and the expressive techniques used to convey them. [End Page 769] Each chapter seeks to explore elements of the contemporary genre of postmemory. Bellamy considers a range of texts by ethnic women that include not just African Americans but what she calls "hyphenated Americans" (14). While the first two chapters of the book analyze narratives of African American postmemory (particularly those of slavery) in novels by Jones, Butler, and Perry, the remaining three chapters provide examples by other ethnic American women that offer their own "particular challenges of geographical, cultural, and linguistic displacement": García's portrait of the Cuban Revolution, Keller's account of the Korean tradition of comfort women, and Danticat's story-cycle of Haitian traumatic history. Beginning with Jones, the book establishes a classic example of postmemory fiction in which "late-twentieth-century descendants of American slaves" must engage with "their traumatic inheritance" as a "process of excavating memories and experiences that have been consciously forgotten, distorted, or destroyed" (19). This is a process, Bellamy claims, that Jones recuperates through the use of "oral transmission to access the experiential history of slavery and explores how the physical body testifies to the enduring trauma of enslavement." But, she asks, "[w]hat if postmemory were experienced physically, affecting the inheritors of traumatic memory in their bodies as well as their minds and emotions?" (45). This is the question Bellamy asks with regard to Butler and Perry, and which she complicates in the third chapter in a discussion of embodiment in García's Dreaming in Cuban. In this novel, García "uses alternative forms of connection...

Liberdade na selva. A formação de um campesinato negro no Pacífico colombiano, 1850-1930

This article reconstructs the basis on which the black peasantry of the Colombian Pacific was formed after the end of slavery. The descendants of slaves managed to become independent producers, rather than a rural proletariat, through access that had not only the land but also to the forest, water and underground. These peasants were not primarily farmers; extracting gold, ivory palm and rubber to sell it to white traders, who exported. In the context of this extractive economy, freedom meant to achieve control over the territory and work processes. However, yet we need to recognize the contributions that these citizens made the construction of Colombia on the basis of their freedom.

Ethnicity and labour in Mauritius: assessing a cinematic account

We assess the sole substantial film documenting the history of socio-economic relations in Mauritius, a history stamped by long experiences of slavery and bonded labour. We argue that it represents an important crystallisation of a triumphalist ethnic interpretation of Mauritian history. We show the filmic devices used to underline the ethnic narrative and the marginalisation of slave descendants’ voices. We demonstrate that the film ignores the early and strong development of values of equity across racial groups. It obscures the linked creation of a significant labour movement and its contribution to Mauritian society in securing the degree of equitable success which the film makers celebrate.

Le retour des ancêtres royaux suicidés : une histoire régressive malgache

Since 1990, a royal possession cult has been spreading to the cities and villages of a sacred kingship in the Northern Madagascar. This religious tradition is based on narratives relating how some royal ancestors preferred mass suicide by drowning rather than submit to the yoke of the Malagasy pre-colonial Empire in the 19th century. Today, these royal spirits possess some constituents of this kingdom as well as Malagasy and Comorians migrants who settled down in the province during the 20th century. When taking control of people’s minds and bodies, these spirits ask for transforming the different places of their drowning into sacred sites. Royal and common dignitaries use this religious tradition for defending their land tenure rights and claiming their autochthony against the postcolonial Malagasy State, migrants, reformist religious movements, and multinational firms establishing on their lands. Each year, more than 5000 people participate to this possession cult, re-enacting and performing the way these royal ancestors committed suicide into the sea. State officials, Secretaries and mass media attend to this event and are taught about this religious tradition. But my fieldwork and historiographical survey demonstrated several facts which are antithetical to this official version: this tragic event took place in the 17th century, these royal ancestors tried to escape from their aggressive kin before funding this kingdom, this dynastic branch was drowned into a coastal area which never belonged to its territory, and this religious tradition has been introduced into the kingdom in the 20th century by Malagasy migrants and descendants of slaves affiliated to a neighboring divine kingship. How should we deal with these two antithetical narratives?

Pre-slave trade and pre-colonial Africa in the historical consciousness of African-Americans and African migrants in the USA

ABSTRACTAfrican-Americans, who are descendants of slaves forcibly brought from Africa to America hundreds of years ago, and contemporary voluntary African migrants to the USA do not form a single ‘black community’. This statement contradicts the claims of many Black Nationalist movements from the nineteenth century onwards, which argued that all black people are ‘brothers and sisters’ because they share common spirituality and have a common cause that demands their joint action all around the world. However, based on evidence collected in seven states in 2013–2015, African-Americans and contemporary African migrants appear to have different historic memories of pre-slave trade and pre-colonial Africa. Furthermore, the two groups identify different events as key to its history. Many members of both groups do not feel that they share a common ‘black history’. To some extent, the idea of a shared history acts to unite Africans and African-Americans as victims of long-lasting white domination. However, in the final analysis, the collective historic memory of both groups works more to separate them from each other by generating and supporting contradictory or even negative images of mutual perception. In general, the relations between African-Americans and recent African migrants are characterized by simultaneous mutual attraction and repulsion of two magnets. While they understand that among all ethno-racial communities in the country, they, as well as African Caribbeans, are the closest to each other, myriads of differences cause mutual repulsion. This attraction–repulsion effect is, in significant part, due to the differences in historic memory of African-Americans and recent African migrants in the USA.

Secrets of West African Slave Ancestry: Fante Strategies of Silence and the Didactic Narrative in Ghanaian Literature

Abstract Akan customary law prohibits mention of slave ancestry and it is publicly claimed that indigenous slavery has been forgotten. In practice, customary law enables inheritance to be contested on grounds of slave ancestry and the descendants of slaves are stigmatized. In response, strategies of silence conceal knowledge. The example given is Ntam Kɛse, a reminiscent oath that sanctions communication between Fante family members by providing the metacommunicative instruction not to tell nonmembers. This locates the memory of indigenous slavery in Bellman’s “paradox of secrecy.” The thesis of this article is that strategies such as oath taking are being disrupted by nonmembers and that Ghanaian literature offers a solution to engagement with the taboo subject. It is argued that works by Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Ebow Daniel are didactic because they develop an understanding of West African slave ancestry by representing the history of indigenous slavery as a secret.

Agriculture itinérante sur brûlis (AIB) et plantes cultivées sur le haut Maroni: étude comparée chez les Aluku et les Wayana en Guyane française

Résumé Vers la fin du 18e siècle, les Noirs marrons Aluku, descendants d’esclaves rebelles fuyant les plantations hollandaises et les Amérindiens Wayana, arrivant du Brésil, où ils fuyaient les chasseurs d’esclaves, se sont rencontrés sur le haut Maroni, en Guyane française. Ce partage d’un même lieu de vie a été l’occasion d’échanger un grand nombre de techniques, notamment en ce qui concerne l’agriculture itinérante sur brûlis, et les plantes cultivées. Toutefois notre étude montre que le culte des ancêtres chez les Noirs marrons a modifié leur cycle cultural (via la culture du riz), influençant ainsi leur gestion de l’environnement. De même la nature et la diversité des plantes cultivées diffèrent sensiblement en fonction des usages traditionnels et habitudes culinaires des deux sociétés. Les Aluku ont sélectionné de nombreuses espèces et variétés de plantes qui leur sont propres et sont liées à leurs racines africaines. Les Amérindiens cultivent des plantes spécifiques utiles au chamanisme (tabac) et à leur artisanat traditionnel. De plus, leur perception de la nature implique des pratiques cultuelles différentes notamment avant le défrichage. Cette étude illustre l’influence de la diversité culturelle sur la gestion de l’agrobiodiversité et, de manière plus générale, sur l’adaptation de l’homme à son environnement.

"Sou escravo de oficiais da Marinha": a grande revolta da marujada negra por direitos no período pós-abolição (Rio de Janeiro, 1880-1910)

Resumo Este artigo insere a Revolta da Chibata na história das primeiras gerações de descendentes de ex-escravos no pós-abolição. Entende-se que aqueles homens viveram um processo de disputas acirradas com imigrantes, brancos pobres e com os próprios negros livres, nos variados ofícios e contratos de trabalho existentes à época. As Forças Armadas permitiam uma possibilidade de ascensão aos negros, mas também o disciplinamento com castigos corporais. Com base em diferentes fontes, o artigo descreve os problemas enfrentados e as conquistas alcançadas pelos negros - sobretudo os marinheiros, nas primeiras décadas do pós-abolição - e a própria Revolta da Chibata, partindo dos discursos deixados pelos líderes do movimento, oficiais e cronistas acerca do racismo, da escravidão e dos castigos corporais.

Slave descendants’ views regarding national policies on reparations: A Martinican perspective

The present study concerned the views regarding the acceptability of possible national policies related to slavery by people whose families were directly affected in the past. It was conducted in the island of Martinique (an overseas French department), and 298 descendants of slaves participated. Three qualitatively different personal positions were found; these positions were designated Skeptics (28% of the sample), Reparationists (35%) and Undetermined (37%). For people holding a Skeptic position, nothing meaningful can be done to repair the horrors of slavery. However a national policy that includes public acknowledgment of past wrongs can be considered as tolerable provided it is accompanied by material compensations. For people holding a Reparationist position, any national policy that involves public acknowledgment of past wrongs is considered as acceptable, whether or not it is accompanied by material compensation. Policies of amnesia and/or exaltation of the past or policies that involve only material compensations are viewed as not acceptable. In addition reparation policies are considered as more acceptable in cases where socio-economic integration of slave descendants has been achieved than in cases where it has not. For people holding an Undetermined position, slavery and the slave trade are part of the deep past; as a result, it is difficult to have strong views about it or about related policies. These three personal positions were related to educational level and religious involvement in a meaningful way. In particular, undetermined people were less educated and more religious than others.

POST-SLAVERY REFRACTIONS: SUBJECTIVITY AND SLAVE DESCENT IN A GAMBIAN LIFE STORY

ABSTRACTThe article draws on the life story of Musa, a Soninke man from a Gambian village, to shed light on the experience and subjective dimension of slave descent in West Africa. After spending most of his life abroad as a migrant, Musa retired to his home village and came to terms with his status identity as a slave descendant. Rather than by status hierarchies alone, however, Musa's social position was modulated by other aspirations and obligations, particularly those inherent in becoming an elder and a returnee. These predicaments of the self, constructed on the basis of age, masculinity and cosmopolitan knowledge, shaped his life and delineated the space in which he variously interpreted and navigated the legacy of slavery. By foregrounding the ways in which slave descent is dynamically refracted by this broader process of self-making, this article thus goes beyond a framework centred primarily on fixed status identities and on the dynamics of resistance/submission, highlighting instead the multifaceted, even contradictory, positioning of slave descendants in post-slavery Senegambia.

Quilombolas and citizens: national projects and the right to land in Brazil

ABSTRACTIn Brazil, the legal, political, and civil status of the Afro-descendant population in the post-abolition period has long been a topic of conflict and controversy. Public policies relating to access to land, for example, have skewed the concentration of real estate – in both physical and symbolic terms – in favor of certain segments of the population and to the detriment of others who have nevertheless frequently attempted to subscribe to the so-called ‘whitening’ (Europeanization) of the nation. In this article, I trace the trajectory which has carried quilombolas (maroons: the descendants of self-liberated African slaves) of the north of the state of Espírito Santo to a position of publicly affirming their rights to both identity and territory by making land claims against other agents in the public sphere. I seek to identify the contexts of the formation of these assertions of agency in the midst of multiple rural and quilombola identities in order to identify how quilombolas have asserted their relational differences vis-à-vis all other social groups.

Becoming somebody: Bissau-Guinean talibés in Senegal

Parents of trafficked children are mostly ignored or represented in mass media and reports published by international institution and NGOs as desperately poor, ignorant or indifferent. This article gives voice to Bissau-Guinean Fula parents who are descendants of former slaves aiming to raise their social status by sending sons to Quran schools in Senegal. No parent argued they did so because of poverty. Concerned with discrimination, they sent their favourite son abroad hoping he would ‘become somebody’. At the same time, parents mentioned the importance of religious commitment, piety and serving Allah. To their outrage, global institutions and NGOs classify the practice of sending boys to Quran schools in Senegal as child trafficking. Anti-trafficking activities are ongoing, including repatriation of boys from Senegal, something seen as degrading and criminalising. Repatriation of their chosen son is seen as the worst outcome and proof of discrimination. Nonetheless, the parents are resistant and continue to send their sons to Senegal to seek knowledge and ‘fight ignorance’ through religious education.